Ok so I had the usual fiasco with Fedex playing football with my Vega EX when I bought him and the claw came smashed in a good few pieces. I glued it together to a pretty decent standard and you had to look close to see it. For me though I knew it was broke and it pissed me off every time I looked at Vega all I could see were the glue lines on the claw
So I decided to set about fixing it properly and below are the steps and photos I took to do so
1. (Fig 1) Take off Vega's hand and marvel at how easy it is to break the claw. I am amazed some actually made it to people unscathed. Mine arrived as showing which was slightly upsetting. The good news is I took pictures and got Fedex insurance for him so the purchase price ended up only being shipping costs bargain!
2. (Fig's 2 & 3) Take a small knife to remove the claw section out from the hand. The claw section is actually held in by a little glue and can be popped off from the hand relatively simply. As you can see there is a hole in the hand and a small rectangular section added to the claw which fits in there nicely.
3. (Fig's 4,5 & 6) Find a decent sculpture who can make a replacement claw section. I happened upon a guy to whom this was child's play and paid about $35 shipped for it. Not only did he mirror it pretty perfectly he also made it out of a stronger material so it would be less likely to break than the original.
4. (Fig 7) Simply slot this new & improved claw section back into the hole in the hand with a little glue in there and leave it to set
5. (Fig 8) Pop the hand back on Vega and feel happy that when you look it him now you can admire the beauty of the statue rather than have your eye drawn to the broken/repaired claw
